HETEROSEXUAL PROFILING

Abstract

This article unravels some of the complexities involved for heterosexual women aged 30 years and older using online dating to seek out intimate and sexual relationships with men. Drawing on interviews with online dating users in Canada and from media analysis of women's ‘women-seeking-men’ profiles posted on popular online dating sites, we analyse these data in terms of the discursive and material practices required to ‘become’ and perform heterosexuality within the public spaces of cyberdating. Our broad aim is to show some of the ways in which online dating as a technology and sociality affects, through everyday practices, the production of heterosexual subjectivity as an ongoing process through the life course. More specifically, we argue that ‘heterosexual profiling’, a term that refers to the exigency of online dating to make obvious an otherwise unmarked identity emptied of sexual agency and desire, presents particular challenges for women in what is seen as a dating market for the young. Therefore, online dating and the myriad routine everyday activities required to be successful in finding a suitable man entailed a simultaneous negotiation of sexuality and negotiation of ageing for this group of women, who found both pleasure and restriction in their forays online.

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